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ODDITIES

RSJ's Guide to Festivals: Do's and Don'ts

Dec 16, 12:05pm

Tis the season. For music festivals, that is. Here's how to make the most of your time outdoors catching your favourite artists 
 Photo Courtesy: Rohith Sarcar

 

Do

  • Find the sweet spot in front of the stage for the perfect sound. It's ideally at the centre. 
  • Research - Be sure to listen to the music of the artists playing at the festival beforehand. This will get you better prepared for the live experience and you could make personalised schedules of bands to watch/miss at the festival. Unless of course, you're the kind who loves surprises. In that case, being clueless about an artist can be a great way to treat yourself to a "pure" live experience.
  • Observe - Music festivals usually get quite exhausting with a million things to experience all at once and you might end up with blurred memories. If you slow down, though, you might just catch some of that frenzy that music is able to create in the people and the venue around you. These gatherings bring out extreme emotions in people. Mental pictures over digital pictures!
  • Stay hydrated. Remember, if you’ve burnt a hole in your pocket from all the boozing, water is available for free at the nearest bar.
  • Trip. Because that’s what the music should make you do.
  • JUMP! Every vocalist of nearly every band will tell you, anyway.

 

Don't

  • Get too intoxicated and miss out on the headliners and music in general.
  • Miss out on the real live experience whilst recording the entire thing on your phone. Plus your phone gets in the way of people behind you , so give it a break as much as you can.
  • Trip. Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
  • Lose your friends - Being alone at a festival and not being able to share the awesome moments of your favourite band on stage can be seriously depressing. If the festival is not RFID and Wi-fi equipped, be sure to pre-decide on a meeting point with your friends.
  • At the same time, don’t keep looking for your friends and miss out on your favourite bands' performances. Being alone, you can headbang and dance shamelessly. It's pretty fun, we recommend it.

 

 

Festival Dressing

Dress comfortable - Festivals can include long hours, a lot of walking , dancing, drinking, etc. The need to be dressed comfortably to not have your shoes, clothes and accessories get in the way of the music and festival experience cannot be stressed enough. Comfort was, is and always will be chic!

Sport your favourite bands/artists’ official merch! - This one never gets old. Besides the very common black tees of metal and classic rock artists, artists these days offer very interesting designs and options in merchandise which almost always include T-shirts. True fans pounce on their top bands’ official merchandise. And you can team it proudly with a cool pair of shorts/skirts, funky trousers or good old denim jeans!

Even though the GIR mantra has been to wear-what-you-like-nobody-cares-about-your-hippie-vibe, with those camera phones clicking every living moment in filter, we can't deny that we do enjoy getting good pictures of ourselves.

Choosing colours to wear can be trickier than appears, if you must stress on being picky. Firstly, ignore colour stereo-types like wearing black to rock, metal festivals or wearing rainbows to EDM festivals or "earthy" colours, white or other hipsterific colours to festivals with indie music.

Ladies, avoid over-accessorising. Your over-sized deer horn head bands come in the way of the people behind you watching artists on stage, cause that guy wearing a Nirvana tee an existential crisis and we're pretty sure aren’t environment-friendly!

Lastly, we understand that times have changed since the old days of GIR where "how to dress to watch music" was not an actual article headline. Being correctly dressed for a music festival can be as intimidating as going for a red-carpet event now, it seems. For the nervous people out there, all we can say is, winter is coming, and it gets dark quite early. People around you will be pretty wasted and it's a music festival, so chances are whatever you wear as long as you rock out, you will have fun. Isn't it about that anyway?

Upcoming festivals:

Orange Festival of Adventure and Music – Dambuk, Arunachal Pradesh; December 15 – 18

Magnetic Fields Festival – Alsisar, Rajasthan; December 18 – 20

Enchanted Valley Carnival – Aamby Valley; December 18 – 20

Sunburn Festival – Vagator, Goa; December 27 – 30

Vh1 Supersonic – Candolim, Goa; December 27 – 30

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